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iOS & Android Apps Can Steal Your Photos without You Knowing

By Alvin Soon - on 2 Mar 2012, 11:00am

iOS & Android Apps Can Steal Your Photos without You Knowing

The photographs we take on our mobile phones can be among our most private ones, so it's disturbing to discover that both iOS and Android apps can secretly upload your photos to their own servers without you knowing about it.

In Apple's case, a loophole in iOS allows apps to upload your photos once you've given that app permission to access location information. Once that's done, the app can then gain access to and copy the user's photo library. In Android's case, as long as an app has the right to go online, it can upload a user's photos. Even though the ability to do both has been demonstrated to the New York Times, it's not sure if any apps are currently exploiting these loopholes.

Apple has not yet responded to the story, while Google has acknowledged the issue.

Sources: New York Times Bits blog (iOS), New York Times Bits blog (Android).

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